One school district in Texas thinks so, and has adopted a policy change to allow teachers to pack heat in class:
Is Texas ahead of the curve in classroom security, or will this lead to more classroom violence?
I can’t imagine any profession except for the military, law enforcement, or a job where you are in the wilderness, needing a weapon.
Good God, no.
Most middle and high school campuses have police officers there anyway, and considering how many of my former colleagues were scary enough when left to play with scissors, the idea of them carrying loaded firearms is downright terrifying.
The only time I can see allowing a teacher to carry a firearm on school property during school hours is if there is an immediate threat to their life - an estranged spouse ready to kill them or something.
And there were plenty of school shootings before schools were declared “no gun” zones. Please.
With an idiot of a superintendent like that, I’d want protection 
Before 1990, Wikipedia lists 8 or 9 school shootings - and I can’t help but think that list would be longer if there’d been the same media hysteria around single deaths (edit - and even non-fatal ones) which pad out the latter section of that list.
Sure, that it’ll keep their zero-death rate down to zero, and I’m sure that’ll keep them happy. Don’t go using it as evidence for it being a good model to base policy on, though.
Big flap over nothing. I’ll bet the end policy of the District is to allow selected Administrators to carry, and not any classroom teachers. That way the defensive capability is there, without the proliferation problem.
As long as the educator in question is properly trained and licensed to carry a concealed weapon I don’t see what the big deal is.
No way would I send my kid to a school where their teacher might be packing. No way would I teach in a school where my colleagues might be. Most teachers are intelligent, capable professionals. That still doesn’t mean I want them carrying a gun into a classroom full of children. Some teachers and plenty of administrators are–to put it mildly–dumber than a box of rocks. I don’t want these people carrying a gun at all.
At any high school, many of the pupils could overpower many of the teachers, should they choose to. What if they discover a firearm in the process? (There’s a reason they don’t ‘properly train and licence’ 15-year-olds.) Or if the teacher is preparing to use it at the time? You want your kid in that room?
Bingo. The one superintendent who sees this as his calling gets to carry his beauty, and peace is maintained.
Ugh.
My father received special training as a teacher for handling violent students, but that was because he once worked in a school specifically for students with behavioural and emotional difficulties. Needless to say, guns were not involved, and his training was more to do with proper ways to physically restrain a student in danger of hurting themselves.
But that’s the exception. In general, a teacher’s primary job/training is not to deal with violence and violent situations. And I can’t help but feel that if your primary job/training is not to deal with violence, then bringing a gun to a situation because you expect violence is a bad, bad idea. Dealing with violent situations is not simple. Dealing with violent situations involving children is not even close to simple. Expecting to be able to “simplify” it by packing heat is ridiculous.
I would seriously question the sanity of a teacher who brought a concealed weapon into his classroom, expecting to be able to deal with a violent situation because of it. Maybe the teacher is trained to handle the weapon. Is he/she trained in crisis management and negotiation? At properly identifying threats in crisis situations? At keeping other people from hitting him/her on the back of the head and taking their weapon? (Remember, “concealed” doesn’t equal “no one will ever notice”.) Those things strike me as somewhat important if you expect to be able to deal with a violent situation in an environment filled with schoolchildren.
If you are working in a school where students are overpowering the teachers on a daily basis then there are bigger issues than a teacher carrying a gun to school that need to be addressed. If a teacher is using his/her weapon in the process of saving my kid’s life then I have have no problem with it.
And while minor’s are not licensed to carry firearms who says they are not properly trained? There are many programs aimed at children to teach them proper gun use and safety. Also there many shooting competitions for kids. In fact I trust my 12 year old to handle a firearm more than I would the majority of the adults I come into contact with on a daily basis because he has been properly trained to do so.
No, no and HELL NO. If you have a school where a teacher needs to bring a weapon in, you’ve got bigger problems to solve first.
Jesus Christ!
Did you read the story linked in the OP? “Need” is a loaded word here. The school is at least 30 minutes from any help is something bad happens. Allowing the presence of a defensive capability is logical and proper. This isn’t “Arm the teachers so they can take down the kids.” This is “Let the Principal or his designee carry in case something nasty happens.” Nothing more. Get a grip.
Honestly, I don’t see how this is much different from those same teachers carrying guns in any other environment where they will encounter students or other people. (The supermarket, the movie theater, etc.) Certainly you can come up with arguments against it, but I think the “good god NO!” people are being overly emotional and not thinking about the situation clearly.
I can definitely see how this would be more of a problem if this was a school where the students engaging in violence against the teachers was a regular occurrence. In that scenario, you want to be taking drastic measures in an altogether different direction from creating a scenario in which a teacher will either shoot some students, or the students will get a hold of a gun from a teacher. But that’s neither here nor there: this is a case where teachers are arming themselves to defend against a potential external threat, which given their remote location, is not entirely unreasonable.
(Side rant: man, whatever happened to the days when students would bring their own guns to school, for shooting practice or hunting? What the hell is wrong with us today, that such topics inspire fear and hysteria instead of reason and responsibility?)
I don’t have a problem with it, though I’d want the armed person to receive training at least to the level of an armed security guard, whatever the Texas standard is.
I’m waiting for the first “gun cleaning accident,” “accidental discharge,” or student prank reacted to with gunfire to bring on the avalanche of lawsuits by parents.
I have no issues with it. It’s no different in substance from the thousands of people walking around with concealed weapon every day in pretty much every state in the Union. If you don’t worry about them, you shouldn’t worry about a teacher carrying a concealed weapon. After all, it’s concealed. You’ll never know whether they are carrying a weapon anyway. Which is probably a good thing, because I’d bet that right now some teacher in your kid’s school district has a concealed weapon either on his/her person or in their car every day of the school year, and we mustn’t have that, won’t somebody please think of the children?!?! as if teachers don’t already do that as a profession.
And if this is the type of school where something like that could possibly happen-again, you have major problems.
I’m not anti-gun. But I see this as being a bad idea.
Bingo. The odds of something terrible accidentally happening are much, much greater than the odds of Miss Crabapple successfully taking down a crazed gunman. If this proposal were enacted, which I can’t imagine it would be, I would want every parent in the district to have the option of placing his or her child in a gun-free school. I would also want every teacher in the district to have the opportunity of working at a gun-free school.
No, it’s pretty clear to me. If Miss Crabapple carries a gun to the supermarket or the movie theater, my kid might encounter her there for an hour or two at most. If my kid is in Miss Crabapple’s class, he’s spending at least 6 hours a day, 9 months a year in her company. I’m not comfortable with my kid spending that much time with an armed person who is not 1) a law enforcement officer or 2) someone I know very, very well indeed.
Look, you want to keep guns at home or carry them around with you? That’s fine with me. But not when you’re trusted all day long with 30 other people’s children, unless those parents have specifically consented to it.
It’s Texas. I dunno. One of the wonders of the fifty state system is that we get to see experiments like this in isolation. I’ve got no real issue with the matter. It’ll probably be a lot of nothing happens.